Beyond Green: Human–environment geographies for the ‘new’ century

Abstract

The disciplinary heritage of examining human–environment relationships continues to be vital but needs continual updating. In the Australian context, four threads of work can make key contributions in the next few decades: (1) recognising the depth of colonial heritage in 20th-century environmental thought, (2) supporting new Indigenous Geographies, (3) articulating environmental imaginaries beyond the settler-Indigenous binary and (4) responding to precarity and volatility with new ecologies. These threads each have distinct research trajectories – in terms of both their heritage in Geography and their development this century. They nevertheless have in common significant potential to help the discipline address the central shared challenge of contemporary life: facing climate change with commitments to justice. I consider wider implications, including three risks we need to be alert to. One risk is eco-fascism. Another is the re-naturalisation of environmental change as climate change impacts are exacerbated. The third is the amount of energy that needs to go into analysing and negotiating our volatile institutional contexts, potentially at the expense of what we have hitherto understood as core scholarly business.

Geoethical futures: A call for more-than-human physical geography

“…Particular knowledge makers stepping into this academic void enact a politics and a different geoethical practice (often performed generously, and sometimes documented, outside of academic spaces and literature). Vitally, considering the more-than-human subject, and who has stepped into this void of knowledge production and curation we witness a suite of exciting indigenous works in which land (Bawaka et al, 2015; see Head, 2022) and water (RiverOfLife et al, 2020) speak (see Howitt, 2022). As noted in the title of the text by Brierley (2020), this might envisage ‘Finding the Voice’ of the more-than-human subject, to take us ‘ beyond Restoration and Management’ (italics added), enacting respectful and sustainable approaches to living with rivers rather than asserting human authority over rivers in the ways that we manage them.…”

“…A more-than-human, relational knowledge promises to move us beyond notions of trade-offs, growth within limits, and un-natural compromises: life cycles can only be broken once, habitats are non-exchangeable, and there is no such thing as half an ecosystem. It should take us to restoration of, care for, and partnerships with, a wider cast of non-humans and humans alike, prioritising recognitional, distributional and intergenerational (social and environmental) justice (Bennett, 2018; Head, 2022). It will help us to escape the bounds of project ontologies (Le Heron and Lewis, 2011).…”

Anthropocene: Shrug, engage, or do new sorts of work?

“…As I have written elsewhere (Head 2022), there is a risk of re-naturalising environmental change, as the impacts of climate change and environmental hazards are exacerbated and become more visible. In Australia, for example, politicians have long been adept at blaming nature for things they could influence, but in the last few years we have seen the re-emergence of Mother Nature as the guilty party in the face of devastating floods and fires.…”

Ethics as first method: Reframing geographies at an(other) ending-of-the-world as co-motion

“…As Sharp et al (2022) put it in their contribution to this issue, ‘we’ urgently need to learn the importance of being care-full and geoethical. Similarly, Head’s (2022) contribution here urges us to respond to the challenges ‘we’ face with ‘new ecologies and commitments to justice’.…”